Time, National Geographic, Others Team Up with SFI

Publishers Time Inc., the National Geographic Society, Macmillan, and Pearson have formed a partnership with the Sustainable Forestry Initiative eco-label in a bid to help spur the growth of certification to preserve and protect forests.

SFI Forest Partners says it will aim to make certification more efficient and accessible by providing resources for activities such as shared consulting expertise, group certification and audit coordination.

By the end of 2014, SFI Forest Partners aims to certify five million acres of forests to the SFI 2010-2014 standard. By the end of 2017, the program hopes to certify 10 million acres of forest across the United States and Canada. It will also seek to certify more small and medium-sized mills to SFI sourcing or chain-of-custody certification, SFI said.

The SFI Forest Partners Program builds on a pilot project in Maine that resulted in an additional 1.4 million acres certified to the SFI 2010-2014 standard. The Maine project also resulted in 100,000 acres of forest lands certified to the American Tree Farm Standard, SFI says.

A decade ago, Time Inc. was one of the first companies to make a public commitment to use 80 percent certified fiber, according to Guy Gleysteen, Time’s senior vice president of production. But Gleysteen said that progress beyond that goal has been “hampered” by inadequate supplies of certified paper. Time is hoping that the new partnership will give it a direct impact on the growth of forest certification and the responsible sourcing of forest products.

Five years ago Pearson committed itself to climate neutrality for its directly-controlled operation. The publisher is hoping that the partnership will help compliment the commitment.

In May, US Airways, Shutterfly, Energizer, Allied Electronics, Phillips Van Heusen, Pitney Bowes and Ruby Tuesday announced they would stop using the SFI seal on their products, marking a growing exodus from the eco-label. The move away from SFI was catalyzed by a report by nonprofit ForestEthics, which claimed SFI had inadequate standards to protect forests. At the time of the story, 21 major brands had distanced themselves from SFI, with many of these companies also making commitments to shift over to products certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

One thought on “Time, National Geographic, Others Team Up with SFI”

Thank you for the attention given to the launch of our newest initiative, the SFI Forest Partners program. We are excited to be working collectively with market leaders to keep our forests healthy and our forest communities strong.

With more than 197 million acres/80 million hectares of certified lands across North America, the SFI forest management standard is the single largest forest certification standard in the world. Buyers and governments around the world know the SFI on product label is a sign that wood and paper products come from responsible and legal sources. That’s why the SFI label can be found on a wide range of products – from packaging to paper to building products for commercial and residential use. In fact, the number of label requests SFI receives every day has grown fourfold since five years ago. In just the last twelve months since introducing an online label approval process, SFI has approved more than 5,000 label requests, and at an average of more than 25 label requests a day.